Variants

If a shirt comes in three sizes and two colors, the shirt is your product and each size and color you sell is a variant with its own SKU and price.

A variant is one version of a product that you sell. If a shirt comes in 3 sizes and 2 colors, the shirt is one product, and each size and color you sell is a variant of it. You describe the shirt once, and each variant has what makes it different: its own SKU, its own prices and costs, its own stock, and its own dimensions.

You build variants from options. An option is a question about your product, like Size or Color, and its values are the answers, like S, M, and L. You type the options and their values, and the PIM creates one variant for every combination. The names you pick mean nothing to the PIM, so a Size with S, M, and L in it is treated exactly like a Voltage with 110V and 220V.

Give your product options when each version needs its own SKU, its own price, or its own stock count. Leave it without options when it is one thing. You then edit its SKU, prices, and stock right in the product editor, and you see all of them at once. Two conditions are never two variants: Condition is a field on the product, so you keep a New copy and a Used - Good copy as two products.

You do everything on this page inside the product editor. Open products, click a product, and scroll to its Variants section. You see a table of the product’s variants, and above it a Manage button that opens the dialog over the page where you build options.

Before you start

What your role lets you do

Whatever your role, you can open a product, read its variants, and create, edit and delete them. Nothing on this page is above your level. Roles are set in team, roles and permissions.

Nothing is real until you save the product

Your product’s own numbers do not move into its first variants

How to give a product its first options

1. 1

   Open the Manage Variants dialog

   From products, open your product and scroll to the Variants section. Click Manage above the table. A dialog called Manage Variants opens, with one empty option already started for you.

2. 2

   Name the option

   In the Options list on the left, click the pencil icon on the row called Option 1 and type a name, like Size. On a phone, type into the Option name box on the right instead.

3. 3

   Type its values

   On the right, under Values, type your first value, like S, into the empty Option value box. A fresh empty box appears under it for the next value, and pressing Enter jumps you into it.

4. 4

   Add another option if you need one

   Click Add option at the bottom of the list, name it, and fill its values the same way. One option is enough for many products, so skip this step freely.

5. 5

   Finish, then save the product

   Click Done. The dialog closes and you get one row per combination in the Variants table. Click Update at the bottom of the product editor to save it all.

That is the whole flow. Every variant the PIM just created is empty. Your real work starts now: click each row and give it a SKU, a price, and stock. Identifiers, pricing, and inventory explain those fields.

Everything below explains the table and the three dialogs one at a time. You do not need any of it to set up your first options.

Every option in detail

Reading the variants table

The Variants section of the product editor shows you 10 variants per page, and the control at the bottom of the table raises that to 25 or 50. Click a row and you are editing that variant.

Three more columns start hidden for you: On-hand stock, Supplier stock, and Fallback stock, the physical numbers behind the effective one. You switch them on with Columns, in the toolbar above the table. Inventory explains how the effective number is picked.

Building and changing options in Manage Variants

Manage, above the variants table, opens a dialog called Manage Variants, and that dialog is the only place you can create, rename, reorder, or remove options. Your options are listed on the left, and the selected option’s values are on the right. On a phone you pick the option from a dropdown called Current option instead.

You get up to 150 characters for an option name and for a value, with a counter under the box. Two of your options cannot share a name, and one option cannot have the same value twice. Capitalization does not make values different, so red and Red count as the same value, and the repeated one shows Duplicate value under its box.

Nothing in the dialog counts until you click Done, and even Done only updates the product editor, which still has to be saved. Cancel, the X, clicking outside, or pressing Escape asks Discard changes? whenever you changed anything, with Discard and Keep editing as the answers.

What a change does to your existing variants

Once a product already has variants, changing its options rewrites the variant list the moment you click Done, without asking. What happens depends on the change you make:

An empty variant has no identifiers, no prices, no costs, no dimensions, and no images. It starts with Track Inventory on and stock at 0, so it reads as out of stock until you fill it in. Nothing fills a variant in for you.

A combination you deleted stays deleted. Growing the options only creates combinations that have never existed, so nothing you removed earlier comes back on its own. Add it yourself with the Add variant button above the variants table if you want it again.

Deleting goes the other way and tidies up after you. A value that none of your variants uses any longer is dropped from its option, and an option that loses its last value is dropped entirely. Delete every Red variant and Red stops appearing.

One caution before you add values freely: the variant count is the multiplication of the value counts. Three options with 5, 6, and 4 values are 120 variants, and you type a SKU, a price, and stock into each one before it is worth publishing. Add the values you actually sell, not every value that exists.

Adding one variant at a time

Add variant is next to Manage above the variants table, and it appears once your product has 2 or more options. With one option, one more variant is one more value, so you add the value in Manage Variants and the PIM creates its variant when you click Done.

The Add variant dialog shows you one box per option. Each box takes an existing value, or a brand-new one you type. A new one is added to the option when you save. A value that would repeat a combination you already have is grayed out, with Already used next to it. When the whole combination already exists, Save turns gray, with a message telling you to pick a different one. A Preview: line shows you the name the new variant will have. Cancel throws away the values you typed along with the variant.

Editing a variant

Click any row of the variants table and a dialog called Edit Variant opens. Inside it you find exactly the sections the product editor gives up when a product gains options, plus the variant’s own images: Identifiers, Assets, Pricing, Inventory, Product Dimensions, Shipping Dimensions, and Customs. Identifiers, pricing, and inventory explain their fields.

The combination itself is fixed: nothing in this dialog lets you change which option values the variant is. To turn your Red / M into a Red / L, you delete it and add the one you want.

In the header, a dropdown next to the title switches you to any other variant without closing the dialog, and asks whether to discard your unsaved edits first. The integration logos there only show you where this variant is published. A Data Sources button appears when a supplier feed writes to this variant, and the menu at the right gives you Duplicate and Delete.

Update stays gray until it can act. You need to have changed something, and every identifier has to be valid and not already in use elsewhere in your catalog. The button also stays gray while the check on an identifier you just typed runs, while a price breaks a blocking rule, and while an amount is too large to store. A warning, like a price under your MAP, never blocks the button.

Images are the one field you rarely retype. In the image picker, the From product switch narrows the library to the images already on the product. A photo you attached once can then be pointed at every variant that needs it.

Every message in this dialog tells you the same thing: save the product. Update only writes the variant into the product editor’s draft, and saving the product is what makes your changes real and what sends the product to your connected integrations. On Amazon a variant goes out as your offer: its condition, its price, and the link between your SKU and the ASIN on the first push. Its quantity goes too when you ship orders yourself, and it never goes out as images or text, which integrations explains.

Duplicating a variant

Duplicate, in the Edit Variant menu, copies the last saved state of the variant, and asks to discard your unsaved edits first. The copy keeps your costs, prices, stock, dimensions, and customs values. It arrives without identifiers, because a SKU is unique across your catalog, without images, and without option values.

That last gap is a trap. No dialog lets you give the copy its option values after that. The Variants section shows a red line naming the variant that is missing a value for every option, and the product’s Update button stays gray until you delete the copy. Add variant is the dependable way to create a variant, because it asks you for the combination first.

Deleting variants

You can delete from two places, and both wait for you to save the product.

In the variants table, check the box on each row you want gone, and a bar appears above the table with Delete in it. Clicking it asks Delete selected variants? and reminds you the deletion takes effect when you save the product. Inside Edit Variant, the menu’s Delete asks you Delete this variant? with the same reminder, then closes the dialog.

Select every row and delete, and you are removing the options along with the variants, so you get the bigger question from the next section instead.

Removing every option and going back to a plain product

Two routes take you to the same place: removing the last option in Manage Variants, and selecting every row of the variants table and deleting. Both ask you Remove all variants?, warning that variant data, identifiers, listings, and images go for good.

Like everything else here, nothing is written until you save the product, so closing the editor and discarding brings the variants back. Once you save, they are gone for good, along with their identifiers and their listings on your integrations.

Limits

Your integrations set their own limits, so a product the PIM accepts can still be rejected on the way out. You will find those rejections under When something goes wrong below.

What a variant cannot do

What goes on the variant, and what stays on the product

Once your product has options, six sections leave the product editor and reappear inside every variant. The rule behind the split: you write anything that describes the thing you sell once, on the product. Anything that identifies, prices, or counts one sellable unit goes on each variant.

So you never type a title, a description, or specifications on a variant. A variant has no Resources area either. A manual or a compliance document is about the shirt, not about the red one in medium.

What each variant does have is exactly what makes a wide set of variants expensive for you to fill: its own identifier, its own prices, and its own stock. Pricing adds two more per-variant layers on top, your per-currency overrides and your per-integration price table.

When something goes wrong

The product will not save

A red line above your variants table names a variant missing a value for one of its options. Your product’s Update button stays gray while the line is there. That variant is almost always a copy you made with Duplicate, because a copy arrives without option values. Delete it and your product saves again.

Someone else changed the product while you had it open

If another person edits the variant you are editing, a banner titled This variant changed appears in the Edit Variant dialog, with a Reload button to load their version. Reloading discards your unsaved edits, and the banner says so.

If another person deletes variants of the product while you have it open, your save is stopped with Some variants were deleted by another user. Refreshing..., and the product reloads to show what is really there. Check your variants and save again.

An integration rejects the product

The PIM saves any number of options, values, and variants, and each integration checks your product against its own limits on the way out. You find a rejected push in sync issues, with the reason on it. On Shopify the messages are:

Where to go next